The U.S. higher education system is looking suddenly and seriously ill in this economic revolution we’re living through.

The flash-mob restructuring of our entire economy and way of life (courtesy of the floods of information and connectivity flowing from the Internet and mobile technologies) is shining a harsh light on the punishing expense and brittle bureaucracy of our college and university education system.

And now disruptive innovators are taking dead aim at the heart of the system. Using badges. Parents (a.k.a. college- funding sources): Take note.

Let’s deconstruct higher education for a moment. What function do the college and university systems provide for our employment-based economy? Three critical things, in particular:

• Intelligence screening via the college-application process. Employers are forbidden to administer and use IQ tests under the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1971 Griggs vs. Duke Power decision. But colleges and universities can use IQ tests all day long — and do, in the form of the SAT and ACT tests for applicants. A certain college on a résumé therefore becomes a proxy for an applicant’s IQ cohort.

• Knowledge transfer, moving the accumulated wisdom of mankind from one generation to another, via the traditional classroom and related academic activities.

• Credentialing, conferring degrees upon qualified students so employers know which ones have literally “made the grade.”

Vital functions all, to be sure. But our higher education performs those functions at a horrifying and endlessly inflating cost to parents, students and taxpayers.

College degree’s worth

Worst of all for students and their parents, the very credentials they receive at the end of the process are seen as increasingly irrelevant to the ever more frictionless, collaborative, free-agent economy unfolding worldwide.

Each of the three major higher education functions above are being tackled, directly or indirectly, by the Internet revolution. The transparency that Google and social media increasingly bring to all our lives has begun to open other windows that supplement and supplant mere SAT scores and GPAs for screening purposes. Educational Molotov cocktails like Khan Academy and MITx (and tens of thousands of individuals with Youtube instructional/teaching videos) are changing the way knowledge is transmitted and breaking down academia’s classroom monopoly.

But the idea of alternative credentialing methodologies — “badges” — could prove to be the shot heard round the world in the educational revolution. According to higher education journalist Anya Kamenetz, badges in this Internet age are a “little bit of digital skin on a familiar idea: A merit award for developing a specific skill or accomplishment, with an emphasis on out-of-school or informal learning.”

Thinking of military badges is a good way to wrap your head around the concept. Specific badges are given as an imprimatur of knowledge or a notation of a great feat.

In the civilian world, those badges can be created for everything from specific subject accomplishments (in algebra, say, or organic chemistry) to practical business skills (cold calling, maybe, or Excel spreadsheet building) to “battlefield” feats in the business world (generating a million dollars in sales, mastering payroll regulations).

New type of recognition

While a résumé has been in some ways the business equivalent of a chest full of medals, current efforts are underway to standardize badging systems and create a worldwide, digital, interoperable currency of human endeavor and success.

“It sounds futuristic, but it isn’t,” says Kamenetz, who recently wrote the eBook “Learning, Freedom, and the Web” for the Mozilla Foundation — backers of the open-source software movement that created the Firefox browser and other free Internet tools. “The Mozilla Foundation recently teamed with the Macarthur Foundation (the “genius grant” people) to encourage development of standardized badging systems … this whole area is attracting so much excitement.”

The Walt Disney Co.
, NASA and Intel all created award-winning badging systems under the program.

The potential benefits of broad badging systems are enormous for the business world. Tracking educational attainment in a vastly more accurate and current way than a decades-old bachelor’s or master’s degree should help make hiring employees and independent contractors less painful, faster and more effective.

All of which holds the prospect of breaking higher education’s odious lock on serious credentialing — as well as taking dead aim at its pricing power. Forward-looking institutions such as Duke University and MIT are working to embrace this creative destruction and remake themselves for the 21st century.

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